On February 6, 1947, the Nanjing Military Tribunal conducted a public trial of Gu Shoufu, the main perpetrator of the Nanjing Massacre. When the trial reached an impasse due to insufficient evidence, a photo album appeared, and Gu Shoufu's smiling face instantly turned like a blank piece of paper, and finally bowed his head and confessed.
In January 1938, under the cold wind, the streets and alleys of Nanjing city became even more desolate. Although the Japanese army was still committing evil in Nanjing at this time, there was still a studio called Huadong Photo Studio that insisted on operating.
At this time, a Japanese officer suddenly came in the photo studio, and the Japanese officer took out a roll of film and handed it to the owner of the photo studio, telling the boss to develop the photos as quickly as possible. After the boss sent the Japanese officer away, he handed the film to Luo Jin, a 15-year-old apprentice, and asked him to rinse it immediately.
Luo Jin
Luo Jin took the film into the darkroom and skillfully rinsed the film. But when he saw the images on the film, he was frightened, because the film recorded the atrocities of the Japanese army in the city of Nanjing, killing ordinary people and raping women.
Looking at the photos in front of him, Luo Jin's mind involuntarily came up with the atrocities he had witnessed in the city of Nanjing, and Luo Jin immediately realized that these photos were the most powerful evidence that the Japanese army had committed a massacre in Nanjing. So he printed another set and secretly hid the photos.
Luo Jin made a simple small photo album out of cardboard and white paper, bound all 16 photos into it, and drew a cover for this album: the left half of the cover was two red hearts dripping blood, the upper right corner was marked with a "shame" word, a question mark was drawn below, and there was a dagger stained with blood under the question mark.
A few days later, there were several Japanese soldiers in the photo studio, and when they entered the store, they called the boss and Luo Jin together, and then asked them if they had any photos taken by the Japanese army in Nanjing. After being denied by the boss and Luo Jin, a Japanese soldier threatened: "In the future, no one is allowed to rinse the photo, and the imperial army will not be able to do it, otherwise I will kill you!" ”
Luo Jin was well aware of the importance of these photos, and he kept them hidden close to his body in order to keep them from being discovered.
In order to cover up their atrocities in Nanjing, the Japanese army blocked all the images and texts that recorded the city of Nanjing, and at the same time they also glorified the atrocities, reporting that the people in Nanjing were very welcome to help the Japanese army and got along very well with the Japanese army.
In March 1940, the puppet government of Wang Jingwei established a pseudo-garrison brigade in Nanjing and opened a radio training class to recruit young people from the private sector to learn radio technology.
Luo Jin signed up for a radio training class in order to survive and came to Pilu Temple for training. Because it was very unsafe to carry the photo album with him in the training class, Luo Jin always wanted to find a place to hide the album, but he searched for a long time and did not find a suitable place.
Not long after, Wang Jingwei came to inspect the training progress of the training course, and in order to ensure wang Jingwei's safety, the Japanese and puppet authorities searched the training class and found a grenade.
The grenade made the Japanese and puppet authorities very nervous, and they conducted a raid on everyone in the training course to find out the origin of the grenade.
The sudden search made Luo Jin very uneasy, he knew that if this album was searched, he would definitely have the misfortune of killing himself. So he hid the photo album in the hole in the toilet wall under the pretext of going to the toilet, and successfully evaded the search.
After a few days, Luo Jin took advantage of the fact that there was no one in the toilet and prepared to see if the photo album was still there, but when he found the hiding place, he found that the photo album had disappeared.
The disappearance of the album made Luo Jin very uneasy, and he was afraid that the album would fall into the hands of the Japanese and pseudo authorities, so that sooner or later the album would find his head. In order to save his life, Luo Jin took advantage of the darkness to escape the training class, left Nanjing overnight, and fled all the way to a small mountain village in Datian County, Fujian Province, and lived here in anonymity.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Gu Shoufu, the main perpetrator of the Nanjing Massacre, was extradited from Japan to Nanjing for trial.
On February 6, 1947, the Nanjing Military Tribunal conducted a public trial of Gu Shoufu. In order to collect evidence, the Nanjing Military Tribunal not only mobilized the masses to collect evidence, but also found the remains of the victims from the mass graves.
In the face of survivors' testimony, Gu Shoufu still refused to admit guilt, and sly argued that they were talking nonsense, saying that civilians were inevitably injured by mistake in the war, denying that his Sixth Division had committed massacres in Nanjing.
Just as the trial reached an impasse, a photo album was submitted to the military court, and this photo album was the same album that Luo Jin had kept that year.
It turned out that this photo album did not fall into the hands of the Japanese and puppet authorities, but was obtained by Luo Jin's radio training class classmate Wu Xuan.
Wu Xuan stumbled upon the album in the toilet, curiosity drove him to open it, and when he saw the contents of the album, he was shocked by the bloody content recorded in the photo.
As a Chinese, Wu Xuan had the same idea as Luo Jin, and he decided to keep the album and make the atrocities of the Japanese army public in the future.
This sudden photo album surprised Gu Shoufu, who did not expect that under such a tight seal, there was even a batch of photos preserved.
Looking at the album in front of him, Gu Shoufu gave up the sophistry, because he knew that any sophistry would look pale and powerless in front of this album, which was irrefutable evidence that he could not overturn, and finally he had to admit his crime.
Gu Shoufu was executed
On March 10 of the same year, a military court pronounced Gu Shoufu to death and was shot in accordance with the law at Yuhuatai in Nanjing on April 26.
Today, although Luo Jin and Wu Xuan have passed away, this photo album that they saved at the risk of their lives is still there. The album will also be kept in China's Second Historical Archive as the "First Evidence of Jingzi" against the atrocities committed by the Japanese army.